. >> and this union between religion and the state that we know has, you know, for a long time, church and state combined to keep -- to make contraceptives obscene. how do you explain this religious determinism on the part of so many opponents of abortion? >> well, there's sort of two ways of looking at it. i mean, many people don't know that abortion became criminalized in the united states not as a result of really a religious movement, but as part of the effort of white male doctors to professionalize, to gain control over medicine from midwives and herbalists. and also in response to a very similar moment in history that we're in now. it was a point in which there was a great deal of immigration, where native white birth rates were falling, and there was the first beginning of the suffrage and feminist movement, arguing that women shouldn't have to, that women should have a say in whether they have intercourse with their husbands. and the people who were asking the legislature to criminalize abortion were arguing that that had to be done to keep women in their place, to ensure that